Paging Doctor Drivel and Harry...

Jul 16, 2015 37 Replies

The smarts stop when you have your foot on the brake and the speed drops below about 5 mph. They restart when you take your foot off the brake. They have a switch, you have to press it every time you start the engine if you don't want stop/start. Cr@p really.

It was certainly like that on an automatic I had as a loan car, within a couple of seconds of braking to a stop, the engine stopped, regardless of how hard you had braked.

Disagree. I'm fed up with klods who don't turn their engines off at level crossings, especially those where the wait time is known to be long (Wye is a good example).

There is a big difference between stopping the engine at a crossing and having it stop every time you approach an island, junction or just crawling in traffic. With one you hold up the traffic because the car isn't ready to go in short gaps (and doesn't go if you have forgotten to disable it the last time you started the engine). Like I said cr@p, really cr@p.

Then they need to tune the latency.

How? They would need to predict when to start the engine from something other than you releasing the brake or pressing the accelerator.

Introduce a delay before cutting the engine. They can tune that during vehicle development.

En el artículo , Tim Streater escribió:

They could make it intelligent, with a learning mode that adapts to the driving style and conditions, and use that information to decide when or whether to switch off the engine.

So now they have to predict how long you are stopped at the junction before that just big enough gap appears and turn the engine off just as you go to pull out! It doesn't work and I don't think you can make it work unless you have an engine that starts instantly, every time.

Tim+ posted

I only discovered this when I returned the hire car. And even then you have to turn it off every time you turn the ignition on.

This one did, being automatic.

Tim Streater posted

Yes, perhaps if the manufacturers did that, then the cars wouldn't be such rubbish to drive.

I tend to shop midweek, and it's surprising the numbers you see sitting in their car or van in the carpark with the engine running. Especially vans, where I assume the driver isn't paying for the fuel. Usually with a window open - so presumably not for heating or AC?

The one I was lent would restart if you put the clutch down - and wouldn't stop if you held it down. So basically it only stopped the engine if you stopped in neutral.

Toyota - so sometimes they do get their S/W right!

Andy

Bit on the local BBC news last night saying that the majority of the Boris Buses - which are hybrids - are running on pure diesel power at all times, due to faulty battery packs. And he is introducing a battery only version. ;-)

The BMW version monitors the battery performance and if it calculates it is getting too low it wont operate the stop start regime.

I find it more annoying in a diesel engined car than in a petrol engined one. More noise on start up I think

/The BMW version monitors the battery performance and if it calculates it is getting too low it wont operate the stop start regime. /Q

Shurely they all do this?!

Jim K

I would expect them all to do that.

Last week I was driving a Ford Focus with auto engine turn off/on, I was very schkeptical at first but I was surprised, it worked very well.

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